Green Prize in Public Education
Announcing the winning schools of the 2011 Green Prize in Public Education
Green Prize Winner
New Vista High School - Boulder, Colo.
Inspired by an environmental education class called the Community Adventure Program, a club called the Earth Task Force and a robust partnership with local nonprofit, the Cottonwood Institute, students, teachers and staff at New Vista have worked together to implement numerous green initiatives at the school, including lights out lunches, local-sourced lunches, alternative transportation days, and a student-run composting program. The school’s community garden serves as a living laboratory for students to learn about and experiment with growing local food and pollinator habitats. The school has also worked to green their facilities. For example, new solar panels installed in 2010 will eliminate 12,177 lbs of CO2 emissions per year. Additionally, 3.5-gallon toilets have been replaced with 1.28 low-flow models and vending misers cut the energy use of all vending machines by 50 percent. The Boulder Valley School District Sustainability Coordinator has been instrumental in helping New Vista accomplish their goals and has taken the momentum of their success and spread it to the rest of the district by supporting other schools to adopt many of the strategies which have accelerated the greening of New Vista.
Incorporating environmental content into the school’s curriculum has fostered inter-departmental communication, as teachers work together to ingrate real world applications into their teaching. In addition to science classes, New Vista has incorporated the environment into multiple academic subjects including civics, English and mathematics. Last year, for example, a civics class project resulted in a successful petition to the Boulder City Council that led to a ban on plastic bags at grocery stores.
The students at New Vista have been catalysts in the school’s greening efforts. As teacher Paige Doughty claims, “Our green initiatives don’t just involve the students, the students are the green initiative.” The students have made going green fun, incentivizing alternative transportation to school with prizes, organizing a recycling/composting relay race competition, creating educational campaigns including music video projects and designing and implementing student-directed service-learning projects. This spring, students will be attending the very first Green Prom by utilizing alternative transportation, facilitating a dress exchange and bringing their own reusable utensils. Many students are enrolling in environmental college programs as a result of their involvement in the environmental initiatives at New Vista. And, following the example of their students, many staff have also begun to bike and bus to school.
New Vista has ambitious plans to expand their greening efforts. The school would like to install a drip irrigation system in their garden, increase their photovoltaic capacity, plant additional trees to offset the carbon emissions of student-related travel and convert 20 percent of the roof to a green roof, just to name a few of their upcoming projects. Additionally, they are pursuing strategies for hiring a local community member to help maintain, expand and educate about the school garden. Students are also working to design a student-led professional development workshop for teachers, focusing on further incorporation of environmental education across the curriculum.
Merit Award Winners
Waters Elementary School - Chicago, Ill.
The School Ecology Program at Waters Elementary School has been critical to their transformation from an underachieving school on an asphalt city block to a highly desirable school with a wait list and a flourishing school garden that serves as a model for other schools in the area. In addition to school gardens, the school also boasts lunchroom waste composting, whole-school recycling, a solar panel array, a water-permeable playground and related bio swale system and rain barrels. Waters has also serves as a mentor to a number of area schools and organizations interested in adopting many of the t green initiatives going on at the school.
These school-wide greening projects have provided valuable fodder for academic study. For example, students record and calculate the daily, weekly and total accumulated power gain of the solar panels. The school garden is also a valuable resource, providing the students an opportunity to plant and harvest their own vegetables.
The school building itself along with its operations is also becoming greener. The weekly school newsletter is now electronic, the carpet tiles are recyclable, the hall tiles are chemical-free and all overhead light fixtures have been converted from T12 to more efficient T8 lamps. Additionally, a new addition to the school building is LEED-certified.
In addition to benefitting the students academically, the school garden and Field Ecology Program have actively involved the local community, with the gardens and school grounds serving as a well-utilized professional development site for teachers, administrators and parents. A dedicated community group also helps maintain the school garden. Students have played an integral role in interacting with the local community. One class of graduating 8th graders developed and presented a successful campaign to the Alderman and School Board resulting in the replacement of playground pavement with water permeable surfaces as their class gift to the school.
Waters has many plans for future school greening efforts. In addition to more solar panels, the school plans to conduct a feasibility study so that they can apply for wind turbine grants. They also plan to put a salad bar in the lunchroom with produce from the school garden.
Common Ground High School - New Haven, Conn.
Common Ground – the nation’s first environmental charter high school – has been involved in school-wide greening from its inception. The school site is a 20-acre demonstration farm, which serves as a learning laboratory for a variety of subjects, including Ecología (Spanish and Biology), Power (Energy Science and Policy) and Biodiversity (Statistics and Community Ecology). The students also put on productions of Shakespeare in the school’s outdoor classroom, surrounded by a Shakespearean garden they helped to design and tend.
Students play a key role in school-wide greening projects, including sustaining their urban farm, operating their recycling and composting programs and helping to lead environmental education programs for elementary students.
Teachers have also been a driving force in the school’s greening efforts, forming a school-wide Environmental Leadership Team and creating a set of core environmental standards to teach to alongside state academic standards. They also launched the Green Jobs Corps, a year-long program that connects students with paid environmental jobs on and off the school site. The Environmental Honors program challenges students to take on ambitious, independent capstone projects.
The school’s 20-acre urban demonstration farm provides 5,000 pounds of produce each year. More than half is used in the school’s universal free lunch program, while the other half is sold at farmer markets and donated to soup kitchens. The school uses organic practices to grow the produce.
Common Ground has many plans to continue greening into the future. Students and staff are interviewing architects competing to design two new model green buildings on the school’s campus. They also plan to create a web-based platform that will enable them to share green ideas and strategies with other schools.
